7 ms·

I think I’m not alone that Mastodon is giving me the ick

36 points by dustedcodes 4y ago

pisscel 4y ago
[flagged]
jandrese 4y ago
The bit about tone policing is under appreciated IMHO. If you are very careful to never offend anyone then you will never be influential. Influence is about changing people's mind and people may be offended when you challenge their preconceived notions. Now obviously you need moderation on large discussion platforms. The disproportionate effect of trolls can't be ignored, but it is possible and even easy at times to go overboard and create a space where nothing of value can be discussed. It's the sort of thing you see when people are complaining that a space feels stuffy and corporate.
- krapp 4y ago
  I disagree. It's entirely possible to have discussions of value between people of differing beliefs without offense, certainly without purposely seeking to offend. That and the "influence" culture it creates is a large part of what people fled to Mastodon to avoid. You don't have a right to come into someone else's space and insist on telling them they're wrong about their beliefs or identity or whatever you take issue with. There are plenty of spaces on the internet where the rough-and-tumble of politics and argument and offense are welcome, but it doesn't have to be everywhere.
  - jandrese 4y ago
    What is the point of the internet if not to tell people they are wrong? But more seriously, you don't have to have the intention to offend to run afoul of overly restrictive policies. Even worse this can create an atmosphere of fear that stifles discussion. Self censorship is the most insidious form of censorship.
    - krapp 4y ago
      >But more seriously, you don't have to have the intention to offend to run afoul of overly restrictive policies I don't have the intention to offend because I don't find value in offending people. Most of the people I follow on Mastodon are game developers, programmers or nerds of some sort. A lot of those people are also gay or trans or furries or any number of easily targeted demographics. I don't refuse to respect their pronouns or try to debunk their gender identity or whatever out of fear of the system but because I'm not homophobic or transphobic. Because I don't seek conflict wherever I go. >Even worse this can create an atmosphere of fear that stifles discussion. It doesn't though, there's plenty of discussion on Mastodon as far as I can tell. No one seems to be fearful about it. Not wanting to have the conversations you want to have isn't the same as being afraid to have them. >Self censorship is the most insidious form of censorship. Self censorship is maturity, it's potty-training and big-boy pants for the mind. Your assumption that the only reason anyone would have to exercise restraint and self control being fear is inaccurate. The most effective arguments I've come across counter to my own beliefs have been presented with an implicit respect for me as a person, civility and reason. People who go out of their way to insult me or twist my words in bad faith because they're chasing endorphins rather than ideas aren't liable to convince anyone of anything. And yes, you have to follow the rules of the house. That's not oppression, that's society. If you don't like it, feel free to spin up your own Mastodon with blackjack and hookers, like Trump did.
hombre_fatal 4y ago
I think this is inevitable when your community is basically a splinter group from some incumbent which ends up being an identity-level trait of that splinter group. It contributes to a culture of NOT being like the incumbent instead of a culture of existing alongside the incumbent. Another example would be Reddit clones like Voat and, sometimes, even HN. When I was a pre-teen, I was banned from NeoGAF, the massive gaming forum, and joined a forum that was basically a bunch of NeoGAF rejects. While I enjoyed it at the time, it could never be its own stand-alone gaming community and, a decade later, still wasn't. Sometimes you had to know about NeoGAF and its current events if you wanted to fit in and understand content on the splinter forum, yet the splinter forum also would want you to believe they weren't in fact chomping at the bit for more NeoGAF/evilore drama. Mastodon reminds me of that, especially after Musk's purchase of Twitter where Mastodon became even more toxic and gleefully adolescent in its anti-birdsite-isms.
- jandrese 4y ago
  On the other hand 4Chan was basically formed when Somethingawful kicked a bunch of weebs off of their forums. They somehow managed to find their own identity.
  - hombre_fatal 4y ago
    Yeah, there are exceptions where the splinter outgrows the incumbent. I know nothing about 4chan much less its early days, but maybe 4chan didn't have the "at least we're not Something Awful" culture, or maybe it was unique enough to attract enough new blood that had no clue what Something Awful was.
tekla 4y ago
As far as I can tell, the only people who moved to Mastodon are the people who are REALLY tuned into Twitter rage, aka the super insufferable ones. Most people seem to be just fine continuing the normal shitposting and whatever on Twitter.
- KerrAvon 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - kranke155 4y ago
    Define Nazi
    - mcv 4y ago
      I don't see enough evidence that Musk is a Nazi, but he does seem more fine with Nazis than with people who disagree with him. Twitter is slowly turning into his private propaganda network. It's entirely reasonable to look for something better.
      - krapp 4y ago
        I suggest "Nazi adjacent" to describe people like Elon, who don't hold explicitly white supremacist, racist or anti-semitic beliefs (that we're aware of) but who seem to find camaraderie with such people out of a common disdain for "the wokes."
        lapcat 4y ago
        I think the "Nazi" epithet just shows a lack of imagination and historical knowledge by those who use it, basically Godwin's Law exemplified. After all, on the American side, the Confederacy predated Nazi Germany by 70 years or so, and with regard to Musk, he comes from South Africa with its own history of Apartheid, so there are much more relevant antecedents, if you want to go there. It feels like "Nazi" has become a just an empty, generic stand-in for "really bad". To be honest, it's difficult for me to take anyone seriously who throws it around like that, regardless of how I feel about the target of the insults. (I'd say the same about "woke" too, by the way.)
lapcat 4y ago
> - People get real nasty about others going back to “the birdsite” > I want to focus on the last point because this has definitely been a contributor to my recent ick. I’ve noticed a few folks getting frankly, horrible about people moving back to Twitter recently and I think it’s a bit unfair. I think it's a bit unfair to say that "Mastodon" is giving you "the ick" when you really mean that a few folks on Mastodon are giving you the ick. I'm on Mastodon, and I haven't seen this at all. I'm not saying it doesn't exist — a bunch of crap exists on every social network — I'm saying that the author seems to be guilty of stereotyping the platform.
- tedunangst 4y ago
  It's weird how the people who find mastodon icky never consider following less icky people.
- mcv 4y ago
  Some people on Mastodon really do love to poke fun at Twitter though. I can imagine that real Twitter fans might not enjoy that much.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    Sure, I've definitely seen that. But that wasn't one of the author's complaints. Instead there was the rather strange complaint: > People relentlessly calling Twitter the “birdsite” Twitter users have been calling Twitter the birdsite since forever, so I don't get the criticism of Mastodon. Maybe now though we'll start calling it the dogsite.
    - hot_gril 4y ago
      Also, who even cares if it's called the "birdsite?" The author is upset about that one word?
      - molotovh 4y ago
        And then there's Tumblr users, who affectionately refer to their own digital home as the "hellsite".
2022-11-07 4y ago
Mastadon depends a lot on what instance you're on. You're community is primarily your instance and non-instance users are secondary (discovery is bad outside the instance). Unlike Twitter you have to be intentional about your community. I've been on Mastadon since before Musk said anything about buying Twitter. I never viewed it as a Twitter replacement, but I never spent much time on Twitter to begin with. I think a lot of people came to Mastadon to look for "Twitter but not Twitter". That's never going to exist. Not in decentralized form, not otherwise.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > Mastadon depends a lot on what instance you're on. You're community is primarily your instance and non-instance users are secondary I don't agree with this at all. Most of my following and followers are on other instances, and that seems to be true of them too, unless you happen to be on the biggest instance mastodon.social, which has a disproportionate number of total Mastodon users, but as a result also doesn't have much of a "community" is such. New Mastodon users, especially Twitter refugees, tend to sign up for whatever instances happen to be available for signup at the time.
  - 2022-11-07 4y ago
    It's interesting that we have such different experiences. I'm on a small instance that's mostly insular. I have a good experience anytime I'm looking at local feeds, but anytime I look at the global feed or search outside the instance the results are very low quality. I follow people outside my instance, but never ones I've discovered through Mastadon.
    - lapcat 4y ago
      Any social network is what you make of it. You can choose to socialize as much or as little as you want.
- voipu 4y ago
  [flagged]
19throw19 4y ago
[flagged]
- lapcat 4y ago
  > I've been saying this for months now. Mastodon (and the Fediverse in general) is a failed idea. It may not be visible now, but it will be in a few years down the line. Funny, that's what we Mastodon users are saying about Twitter. ;-)
  - 19throw19 4y ago
    [flagged]
    - lapcat 4y ago
      > I never had a Twitter account, and I don't even lurk Interesting. Do you have a Mastodon account? Or are you just making grand pronouncements about things that you're completely unfamiliar with? [EDIT:] And apparently you didn't have a Hacker News account until 15 minutes ago, so I have to wonder where exactly you've been allegedly saying things for months?
      - 19throw19 4y ago
        [flagged]
sdfghswe 4y ago
[flagged]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
TRiG_Ireland 4y ago
I quite enjoy the people on Mastodon. Some of them are very irritating in the way that very online people are always irritating, but on the whole they're decent enough. (At least, the ones I see are. Mastodon is very varied.) But I find the platform itself exceedingly irritating. The UI is horrible.
- canadaduane 4y ago
  Elk is pretty good. My vmst.io provider offers either the Mastodon software or the Elk software as optional "frontend"s to the Fediverse.
ungamedplayer 4y ago
People who use the term ick give me the ick.
10g1k 4y ago
People (rightfully) mock reddit, tumblr, discord, etc, for being infested with pedos, but Mastodon has long been far worse.
20throw20 4y ago
[flagged]
jacooper 4y ago
The simplest way of describing mastodon is: its irrelevant. Almost nothing in it mimicks that total twitter coverage of some big event, no matter your nieche. And even though twitter now isnt like Twitter before, its still much much more alive than mastodon. The only nieches that are active on mastodon are tech people and some governments and absolutely nothing else. No sports, no news, heck even tech is smaller, and of course, want to search for something? Good luck. I agree with the author, the whole thing distanced me from Twitter, tried fediverse but it ain't there mate.
- lapcat 4y ago
  > The only nieches that are active on mastodon are tech people By this argument, Hacker News is irrelevant.
  - jacooper 4y ago
    The difference is hacker news actually speaks about stuff outside of tech.
    - lapcat 4y ago
      I'm extremely skeptical of anyone who claims they can say what's happening on all of Mastodon, especially since it's a distributed network.
      - jacooper 4y ago
        Thats actually a part of the problem, search and discoverablility is so crap on purpose, its impossible to find anything or anyone!
- Doxin 4y ago
  > The only nieches that are active on mastodon are tech people and some governments You're forgetting furries and kink-adjacent folks.
  - 4y ago
ekianjo 4y ago
Guy publicly says he will never use twitter again and is angry when people point out the hypocrisy? Sounds like a guy with principles.
21throw21 4y ago
[flagged]
hammyhavoc 4y ago
I was on Twitter since the '00s, gained a few tens of thousands of followers, lost interest over the years, only post about work, and with Musk acquiring Twitter, never read anything on it anymore. I did briefly get back into it in a big way prior to the acquisition, interacting with people properly for the first time in about a decade. However, post-acquisition, I just don't give a fuck anymore. That's the only way I can put it. Since I stopped doom-scrolling Twitter, my mental health is that much better for it, and doom-scrolling was one of the worst things I did during the pandemic and the war beginning. I don't even care to check out Mastodon. I think all these echo chambers are negative. I don't even really go on any kind of social media anymore. I don't miss it.

36 points by dustedcodes 4y ago

[flagged]

The bit about tone policing is under appreciated IMHO. If you are very careful to never offend anyone then you will never be influential. Influence is about changing people's mind and people may be offended when you challenge their preconceived notions. Now obviously you need moderation on large discussion platforms. The disproportionate effect of trolls can't be ignored, but it is possible and even easy at times to go overboard and create a space where nothing of value can be discussed. It's the sort of thing you see when people are complaining that a space feels stuffy and corporate.

krapp 4y ago
I disagree. It's entirely possible to have discussions of value between people of differing beliefs without offense, certainly without purposely seeking to offend. That and the "influence" culture it creates is a large part of what people fled to Mastodon to avoid. You don't have a right to come into someone else's space and insist on telling them they're wrong about their beliefs or identity or whatever you take issue with. There are plenty of spaces on the internet where the rough-and-tumble of politics and argument and offense are welcome, but it doesn't have to be everywhere.
- jandrese 4y ago
  What is the point of the internet if not to tell people they are wrong? But more seriously, you don't have to have the intention to offend to run afoul of overly restrictive policies. Even worse this can create an atmosphere of fear that stifles discussion. Self censorship is the most insidious form of censorship.
  - krapp 4y ago
    >But more seriously, you don't have to have the intention to offend to run afoul of overly restrictive policies I don't have the intention to offend because I don't find value in offending people. Most of the people I follow on Mastodon are game developers, programmers or nerds of some sort. A lot of those people are also gay or trans or furries or any number of easily targeted demographics. I don't refuse to respect their pronouns or try to debunk their gender identity or whatever out of fear of the system but because I'm not homophobic or transphobic. Because I don't seek conflict wherever I go. >Even worse this can create an atmosphere of fear that stifles discussion. It doesn't though, there's plenty of discussion on Mastodon as far as I can tell. No one seems to be fearful about it. Not wanting to have the conversations you want to have isn't the same as being afraid to have them. >Self censorship is the most insidious form of censorship. Self censorship is maturity, it's potty-training and big-boy pants for the mind. Your assumption that the only reason anyone would have to exercise restraint and self control being fear is inaccurate. The most effective arguments I've come across counter to my own beliefs have been presented with an implicit respect for me as a person, civility and reason. People who go out of their way to insult me or twist my words in bad faith because they're chasing endorphins rather than ideas aren't liable to convince anyone of anything. And yes, you have to follow the rules of the house. That's not oppression, that's society. If you don't like it, feel free to spin up your own Mastodon with blackjack and hookers, like Trump did.

hombre_fatal 4y ago

I think this is inevitable when your community is basically a splinter group from some incumbent which ends up being an identity-level trait of that splinter group. It contributes to a culture of NOT being like the incumbent instead of a culture of existing alongside the incumbent. Another example would be Reddit clones like Voat and, sometimes, even HN. When I was a pre-teen, I was banned from NeoGAF, the massive gaming forum, and joined a forum that was basically a bunch of NeoGAF rejects. While I enjoyed it at the time, it could never be its own stand-alone gaming community and, a decade later, still wasn't. Sometimes you had to know about NeoGAF and its current events if you wanted to fit in and understand content on the splinter forum, yet the splinter forum also would want you to believe they weren't in fact chomping at the bit for more NeoGAF/evilore drama. Mastodon reminds me of that, especially after Musk's purchase of Twitter where Mastodon became even more toxic and gleefully adolescent in its anti-birdsite-isms.

jandrese 4y ago
On the other hand 4Chan was basically formed when Somethingawful kicked a bunch of weebs off of their forums. They somehow managed to find their own identity.
- hombre_fatal 4y ago
  Yeah, there are exceptions where the splinter outgrows the incumbent. I know nothing about 4chan much less its early days, but maybe 4chan didn't have the "at least we're not Something Awful" culture, or maybe it was unique enough to attract enough new blood that had no clue what Something Awful was.

tekla 4y ago

As far as I can tell, the only people who moved to Mastodon are the people who are REALLY tuned into Twitter rage, aka the super insufferable ones. Most people seem to be just fine continuing the normal shitposting and whatever on Twitter.

KerrAvon 4y ago
[flagged]
- kranke155 4y ago
  Define Nazi
  - mcv 4y ago
    I don't see enough evidence that Musk is a Nazi, but he does seem more fine with Nazis than with people who disagree with him. Twitter is slowly turning into his private propaganda network. It's entirely reasonable to look for something better.
    - krapp 4y ago
      I suggest "Nazi adjacent" to describe people like Elon, who don't hold explicitly white supremacist, racist or anti-semitic beliefs (that we're aware of) but who seem to find camaraderie with such people out of a common disdain for "the wokes."
      - lapcat 4y ago
        I think the "Nazi" epithet just shows a lack of imagination and historical knowledge by those who use it, basically Godwin's Law exemplified. After all, on the American side, the Confederacy predated Nazi Germany by 70 years or so, and with regard to Musk, he comes from South Africa with its own history of Apartheid, so there are much more relevant antecedents, if you want to go there. It feels like "Nazi" has become a just an empty, generic stand-in for "really bad". To be honest, it's difficult for me to take anyone seriously who throws it around like that, regardless of how I feel about the target of the insults. (I'd say the same about "woke" too, by the way.)

lapcat 4y ago

> - People get real nasty about others going back to “the birdsite” > I want to focus on the last point because this has definitely been a contributor to my recent ick. I’ve noticed a few folks getting frankly, horrible about people moving back to Twitter recently and I think it’s a bit unfair. I think it's a bit unfair to say that "Mastodon" is giving you "the ick" when you really mean that a few folks on Mastodon are giving you the ick. I'm on Mastodon, and I haven't seen this at all. I'm not saying it doesn't exist — a bunch of crap exists on every social network — I'm saying that the author seems to be guilty of stereotyping the platform.

tedunangst 4y ago
It's weird how the people who find mastodon icky never consider following less icky people.
mcv 4y ago
Some people on Mastodon really do love to poke fun at Twitter though. I can imagine that real Twitter fans might not enjoy that much.
- lapcat 4y ago
  Sure, I've definitely seen that. But that wasn't one of the author's complaints. Instead there was the rather strange complaint: > People relentlessly calling Twitter the “birdsite” Twitter users have been calling Twitter the birdsite since forever, so I don't get the criticism of Mastodon. Maybe now though we'll start calling it the dogsite.
  - hot_gril 4y ago
    Also, who even cares if it's called the "birdsite?" The author is upset about that one word?
    - molotovh 4y ago
      And then there's Tumblr users, who affectionately refer to their own digital home as the "hellsite".

2022-11-07 4y ago

Mastadon depends a lot on what instance you're on. You're community is primarily your instance and non-instance users are secondary (discovery is bad outside the instance). Unlike Twitter you have to be intentional about your community. I've been on Mastadon since before Musk said anything about buying Twitter. I never viewed it as a Twitter replacement, but I never spent much time on Twitter to begin with. I think a lot of people came to Mastadon to look for "Twitter but not Twitter". That's never going to exist. Not in decentralized form, not otherwise.

lapcat 4y ago
> Mastadon depends a lot on what instance you're on. You're community is primarily your instance and non-instance users are secondary I don't agree with this at all. Most of my following and followers are on other instances, and that seems to be true of them too, unless you happen to be on the biggest instance mastodon.social, which has a disproportionate number of total Mastodon users, but as a result also doesn't have much of a "community" is such. New Mastodon users, especially Twitter refugees, tend to sign up for whatever instances happen to be available for signup at the time.
- 2022-11-07 4y ago
  It's interesting that we have such different experiences. I'm on a small instance that's mostly insular. I have a good experience anytime I'm looking at local feeds, but anytime I look at the global feed or search outside the instance the results are very low quality. I follow people outside my instance, but never ones I've discovered through Mastadon.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    Any social network is what you make of it. You can choose to socialize as much or as little as you want.
voipu 4y ago
[flagged]

19throw19 4y ago

[flagged]

lapcat 4y ago
> I've been saying this for months now. Mastodon (and the Fediverse in general) is a failed idea. It may not be visible now, but it will be in a few years down the line. Funny, that's what we Mastodon users are saying about Twitter. ;-)
- 19throw19 4y ago
  [flagged]
  - lapcat 4y ago
    > I never had a Twitter account, and I don't even lurk Interesting. Do you have a Mastodon account? Or are you just making grand pronouncements about things that you're completely unfamiliar with? [EDIT:] And apparently you didn't have a Hacker News account until 15 minutes ago, so I have to wonder where exactly you've been allegedly saying things for months?
    - 19throw19 4y ago
      [flagged]

sdfghswe 4y ago

[flagged]

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

TRiG_Ireland 4y ago

I quite enjoy the people on Mastodon. Some of them are very irritating in the way that very online people are always irritating, but on the whole they're decent enough. (At least, the ones I see are. Mastodon is very varied.) But I find the platform itself exceedingly irritating. The UI is horrible.

canadaduane 4y ago
Elk is pretty good. My vmst.io provider offers either the Mastodon software or the Elk software as optional "frontend"s to the Fediverse.

ungamedplayer 4y ago

People who use the term ick give me the ick.

10g1k 4y ago

People (rightfully) mock reddit, tumblr, discord, etc, for being infested with pedos, but Mastodon has long been far worse.

20throw20 4y ago

[flagged]

jacooper 4y ago

The simplest way of describing mastodon is: its irrelevant. Almost nothing in it mimicks that total twitter coverage of some big event, no matter your nieche. And even though twitter now isnt like Twitter before, its still much much more alive than mastodon. The only nieches that are active on mastodon are tech people and some governments and absolutely nothing else. No sports, no news, heck even tech is smaller, and of course, want to search for something? Good luck. I agree with the author, the whole thing distanced me from Twitter, tried fediverse but it ain't there mate.

lapcat 4y ago
> The only nieches that are active on mastodon are tech people By this argument, Hacker News is irrelevant.
- jacooper 4y ago
  The difference is hacker news actually speaks about stuff outside of tech.
  - lapcat 4y ago
    I'm extremely skeptical of anyone who claims they can say what's happening on all of Mastodon, especially since it's a distributed network.
    - jacooper 4y ago
      Thats actually a part of the problem, search and discoverablility is so crap on purpose, its impossible to find anything or anyone!
Doxin 4y ago
> The only nieches that are active on mastodon are tech people and some governments You're forgetting furries and kink-adjacent folks.
- 4y ago

ekianjo 4y ago

Guy publicly says he will never use twitter again and is angry when people point out the hypocrisy? Sounds like a guy with principles.

21throw21 4y ago

[flagged]

hammyhavoc 4y ago

I was on Twitter since the '00s, gained a few tens of thousands of followers, lost interest over the years, only post about work, and with Musk acquiring Twitter, never read anything on it anymore. I did briefly get back into it in a big way prior to the acquisition, interacting with people properly for the first time in about a decade. However, post-acquisition, I just don't give a fuck anymore. That's the only way I can put it. Since I stopped doom-scrolling Twitter, my mental health is that much better for it, and doom-scrolling was one of the worst things I did during the pandemic and the war beginning. I don't even care to check out Mastodon. I think all these echo chambers are negative. I don't even really go on any kind of social media anymore. I don't miss it.